“Softly, softly,” said Mr. Tottenham. “This grows serious. I don’t think I am apt to be moved by jealousy of Miss Lockwood, eh, Watson? You may go now, and if you know anything about the subject, I’ll see you afterwards.” “I know as she’s the best saleswoman, and the most ladylike-looking young lady in the house,” cried Watson; and then he perceived his slip of grammar, and blushed hotter than ever; for he was an ambitious young man, and had been instructed up to the point of knowing that his native English stood in need of improvement, and that bad grammar was against his rising in life. “That will do then; you can go,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Opinion is not evidence. Come, Robinson, if it’s making a feud in the house, I had better, I suppose, go into it at once.” “And I, perhaps, had better withdraw too,” said Edgar, whom this strange and sudden revelation of human tumults going on in the great house of business had interested in spite of himself. “Stay; you are impartial, and have an unbiassed judgment,” said Mr. Tottenham. “Now, Robinson, let us hear what you have got to say.” Robinson approached with a world of care upon his face. Edgar having allowed his fancy to be taken possession of by the Member-of-Parliament theory, could not help the notion that this good worried man had risen to call for a Committee upon some subject involving peril to the nation, some mysterious eruption of Jesuits or Internationalists, or Foreign Office squabble. He was only the head of the shawl and cloak department in Tottenham’s; but it is quite marvellous how much humanity resembles itself, though the circumstances were so unlike. Mr. Robinson had not much more than begun his story. He was in the preamble, discoursing, as his prototype in the House of Commons would have done, upon the general danger to society which was involved in carelessness and negligence of one such matter as that he was about to bring before the House--when a tap was heard at the door, a little sharp tap, half defiant, half coquettish, sounding as if the applicant, while impatient for admittance, might turn away capriciously, when the door was opened. Both the judge and the prosecutor evidently divined at once who it was. “Come in,” said Mr. Tottenham; “Come in!” for the summons was not immediately obeyed.